Redwood City Library Mural Redwood City Library Mural

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In July, 2006, I started a mural for the Redwood City Library (about20 miles south of San Francisco). They are opening a new "HomeworkCentre" in a 72' long room with no windows and no natural light, and my challenge was to bring some light and colour into the room.

Books can open windows onto the world,and this room needs windows! I've just completed the first of 5 faux windows based on the idea of literary landscape. Two of the windows will be purely my design.The other three will be based on, or at least influenced by, designsfrom Redwood City kids. There will be a contest this autumn entitled,"Where a book took me", and children willbechallenged to draw the setting, the land or townscape of afavourite book. All the drawings will be displayed in the library, and the best of them will form the basis for the other three 8' X 5'windows.

The first window is based on the Tales of the One Thousand and one Arabian Nights. They are amongst the oldest stories in the world, and every child is familiar with Aladdin. The Middle East is in the news every day, but there is a massive misunderstanding of

the Arab world these days that is combined with fear and mistrust. I wanted to gently remind people that the Arab world has a rich and ancient culture and literary tradition, ( and the

vast majority of them abhor terrorism.) I wanted to portray a lighter

and more human side of this landscape that is particularly unfamiliar

and foreign to most people in the west. And as you know, I'm living in

Bahrain now, and I wanted an excuse to paint more camels...

The piece is a combination of acrylic paint and collage on canvas.

There are lots of bits of Arabic script, mostly lifted from an Arabic

primer, with sentences like "Memorise your lesson." and "The boy

whosucceeds in the examination is an assiduous student."

 (Remember thisIS a homework centre!)

The boy reading is Gabriel, a frequent visitor

to the library, who, when he was about 7, used to pad over in his

pajamas to check his email. He is painted on a piece of masonite

mounted in front of the canvas and mullions. My friend Stuart did the

beautiful carpentry work, to echo the existing windows in the library.

Anyway it was great fun to do and I look forward to receiving the kids

entries for the final windows. Here are a few photos of the mural.

  Stuart Habley, the wonderful carpenter and I, July 22, 2006